| Abstract [eng] |
Relevence of the research. Nowadays when the economic significance of sport is increasing, sports sponsorship in the West countries is perceived as an effective marketing strategy, improving the sponsor‘s brand awareness, helping to find new markets and establish themselves there. The sponsorship in Lithuania is also very important for receiving organization because the state is often not able to secure sufficient funding. However, earlier research shows that potential of sports sponsorship in Lithuania is under-exploited. This allowed us to presuppose the problem issues of the research: What is Lithuanian business managers’ attitude towards sports sponsorship? What are the motives that encourage sports sponsorship? What obstacles do they meet? What sports organizations managers tend to support most? What are the most attractive subjects of support? How should behave sports organizations to attract financial sponsorship and support? The aim of the researh is to reveal Lithuanian business managers’ attitude towards sport sponsorship. The object of the research is Lithuanian business managers’ attitude towards sport sponsorship. The methodology and methods of the research. The research is based on corporate culture, corporate identity and modern sports marketing theories. Following research methods are used in the paper: analysis of literature and documents, questionnaire survey, descriptive statistics, qualitative content analysis. The sample of the research. 98 randomly selected managers of small and medium Lithuanian business companies participated in the study. Conclusions. The majority of the business managers have positive attitude towards sports sponsorship. Sport sponsorship is mostly encouraged by opportunities to publicize business positive image and to search for new markets for goods and services. Business leaders prefer basketball, cycling, athletics and football to support mostly. Most of the managers would support the sports schools or children's sports clubs, sport events, city (district) representing local athletes. Hypothesis that the majority of Lithianian business managers perceives sports sponsorship as altruistic and financially disadvantageous activity, is partially confirmed. |
